How to be Happy by Eleanor Davis

Rating: WARTY!

This volume actually made me sad because I was hoping for so much more and got so much less. Not that I was expecting a recipe for happiness; that's not what the book is about as the author herself readily admits, which begs the title, but I thought it might be at least entertaining. It wasn't. Maybe the title is pure sarcasm?

All of the stories felt unfinished and the artwork wasn't great, but I don't demand that, as long as the story is engrossing, so this was a serious fail for me: that the stories were so bad. The stories are short and seemingly unrelated to one another - at least I saw no link between them other than their British authorship. I thought I might find some connection here; it's been a long time since I've lived in Britain, and maybe I'm missing things because of that, but the stories never seemed to go anywhere or even have anywhere to go.

I had the impression that the author was really doing nothing more than revealing her own odd view of her life and environs, which is fine, but if there's nothing for the reader to relate to, it remains obscure personal anecdotage with no appeal to a wider readership. This was a lot of work to convey so little, but others may find more to hook into than I did. As for me I cannot commend this.

Nefertiti's Heart by AW Exley

Rating: WARTY!

Since the author announces her first chapter as taking place on Sunday, June 23rd, and later reveals it's a quarter century after Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne, then this novel has to be set in 1860, not 1861 as the idiot blurb in Goodreads states. But that's Amazon-owned Goodreads for you.

Cara Devon is a Victorian woman supposedly living in a steampunk world, but the author seems not to understand steampunk, and features very little of that genre. The story seems to have more in common with Fifty Shades of Grey than ever it does with streampunk, but given that I haven't read (and have no intention of reading) that latter novel, I'd have to say it's a grey area...!

Anyway, that's what I gathered from it from my reading of just under a fifth of it before I felt unable to stomach any more. It's set in an alternate reality which not only bears little resemblance to steam-punk, but also bears little resemblance to Victorian London! There were too many anachronisms and they began to grate in short order.

The character's name alone seems suspect. She is the daughter of Lord Devon, but historically, someone elevated to the peerage didn't simply add Duke or Earl or Lord to his last name. He took the name of the locale over which he was actually the lord (at least historically), so Lord Devon might have been named so because he has or had land holdings in the county of Devonshire. That doesn't necessarily follow especially not these days, and doesn't mean he necessarily lived in Devon either.

The current Earl of Devon isn't named Devon, but Courtenay. In 1860, Viscount Palmerston was 'prime minister', but his name was Temple, not Palmerston. With regard to the government he oversaw, the Lord Chancellor was Lord Campbell and that was his last name as it happens, but the president of the council was Lord Granville, whose actual name was Leveson-Gower. The Duke of Argyle was also John Campbell - a different John Campbell! The Duke of Newcastle was named Pelham-Clinton. The Duke of Somerset was named Seymour, and Lord Elgin was James Bruce. So yeah, it's possible a Lord would have his last named in his title, but it wasn't common then, not like it is now because of the life peerages that have been added.

And that's just the last name. Cara was not a common name. An author can choose whatever name they want of course, but to me names mean something, and Cara wasn't remotely on the radar of names in and around the 1840s which was, I assume, roughly when Cara would have been born. Popular names tended to be queen's names such as Mary, Ann, Elizabeth and so on. Cara wasn't even in the top 100 popular names for a kid.

Maybe the parents wanted to give her an unpopular name, but Cara means beloved. That hardly sounds like a name an abusive father would give a girl he detested - and remember it was the men who ran everything and owned everything back then - often not for better but for worse, so this name felt like something the author had coined because she felt it sounded cool rather than a name which had any real thought given to it or which fitted the milieu in which this character was so precipitously deposited.

Anyway, this author has her hero Cara Devon carrying a pair of Smith & Wesson revolvers in 1860 in England. Given that the company wasn't even founded until 1852 in the USA and that it manufactured (when that word literally meant 'by hand') rifles to begin with, it's unlikely she would have a pair of these revolvers (and ammunition to keep them filled) in England so soon afterwards!

Given that this is an English hero, why not give her a Beaumont-Adams revolver, which has the two names she could have used in place of Smith and Wesson in her slightly tired joke. This was a sidearm in use in the British army from 1856 onward. It took me five minutes to 'research' this. Anita Exley isn't an American author as far as I know. She's evidently from New Zealand, so her choice of weapon is a mystery and her evident laziness was a little off-putting.

There are a lot of modern phrases used in this book which detracted from the Victorian setting, and it wasn't just phrases. There were anachronous behaviors, too. In terms of phrases, for example, I read at one point, "She knew leaving the house unattended would be an invite to every questionable person in London" whereas a Victorian would have used 'invitation', not a shortened version which would have been considered unconscionable slang back then, as would ' Union Jack flag' - it was only a 'jack' when used on a ship, otherwise it was just the Union Flag and in Victorian times probably just the British flag. This flag - in one form or another - dates back to James's accession to the throne after Elizabeth died without (recognized!) issue.

Another instance was in one of Cara's thoughts that are shared with us about a visitor to her house: "Cute, for a copper. Shame he's wearing the coat. I can't check out the rear view." which is hardly what a Victorian woman of breeding would think. And even if she had thought it she would not use the modernism 'check out' which is also an Americanism and would not have been in use in London back then. Nor would she have used a phrase like, "the sooner I can get the hell out of London." This was all in the first few pages. "I guess they are a necessary evil" was another phrase that wouldn't have been uttered. Substitute 'suppose' or 'imagine' for 'guess' and you're in business. This is not rocket science.

In a scene in a lawyer's office I read: "Tea, please, Miss Wilson." He directed his comment to the efficient secretary.... No - they would never have had a female secretary back then. Such a thing was very rare and the solicitor's office did not seem very much inclined to support women's emancipation. At one point I read, "The flow of cards through her mail slot was unrelenting" but it was highly unlikely that a door would have had a mail slot in the 1860s, nor would there have been a "pissing contest" back then. These anachronisms began to jar in short order.

Now you can argue that Cara is not your usual gentile Victorian, but the author tells us Cara was abused. It turns out she was beaten by her brutal father, and also was used as payment for a debt by being loaned out as a whore to the creditor for a week during which she was frequently raped. After that kind of treatment at men's hands, I have serious doubts that she would be 'checking out' men's asses. It seemed more likely she would detest and despise them thoroughly, especially in light of her nervous and retiring behavior exhibited later in the story. This felt like a betrayal of what she had been through and was not appreciated, especially in light of what followed.

At one point the author has her hero going out into the street wearing jodhpurs, which is bad enough, and a corset over her outfit. Bullshit. Women didn't even wear jodhpurs for riding back then, and no one wore a corset over their clothes. This was really a poor choice. Methinks the author was far too influenced by what modern steam-punkers seem to favor and paid no attention at all to convention and culture as it was actually in Victorian times. Again, I know this is an alternate reality, but why even claim it's set in Victorian times if you're going to completely flout all conventions?

The emphasis on youth and beauty in this is disgusting, especially from a female author. I thought that perhaps we were starting to get beyond that, but YA writers don't seem to get it for some reason. Thus we have a victim of a murder mentioned early in the story and the only quality she seems to have had is beauty (and youth). Or was it youth (and beauty)? I read, "The death of a young and beautiful aristocrat." This woman is described in a newspaper headline as a "beautiful debutante" No! Victorian newspapers did not go in for that sort of thing! Later I read that someone couldn't imagine anyone wanting to harm her because she was "so beautiful." "Her face was heart-shaped and would have been beautiful [when she was alive]." later, "...on a beautiful young woman?"

No, no, no! Why is it that YA authors are so insistent upon betraying their gender by declaring so categorically that if you're not beautiful you have nothing to recommend you? Had this murder victim been rather plain would that have made her death far less tragic? It would seem so according to this author, who evidently thinks that all a woman has to offer is the shallow depth of her skin.

If the whole point of the story hinged on a woman's looks - like she was a model or an actor or something, then I can see some attention being paid to superficiality, but when her looks are irrelevant, could the author find nothing else to day about a woman? Perhaps that she was loved? Talented? Had her whole life ahead of her? That she did charity work? That she was brilliant? That she was a wonderful friend? That she was an only child? Anything? Bueller? I detest authors who demean and cheapen women like this.

The worst sin is that this author seems to be setting up the bad boy to win Cara's cold and isolated heart. As I said, Cara was raped repeatedly as a child, yet she accepts the villain's offer to go to his home - unescorted - and have dinner with him. When she gets there, the villain insists she take a bath and put on a dress he has for her and she meekly acquiesces. This supposedly feisty hero of the novel essentially lays down and exposes her belly and throat to the alpha dog. This is the rape victim. This is the woman who was abused. This is the woman who supposedly would die before letting anything like this happen to her again, and she rolls over and comes to heel at this guy's bidding? What a pile of horseshit.

That's when I quit reading this garbage; when the villain went into his bedroom - where Cara was taking a bath, and he spies on her through the slightly open bathroom door, and then while she's still in the bathroom and could exit at any time, he begins himself to change for dinner - and without taking a bath. Later Cara decides of this pervert, "He doesn't look villainous, he looks devilish...or delicious." Barf.

Did #MeToo never make it as far as New Zealand? I find it hard to believe. Maybe Anita Exley is simply clueless. Whatever the reason, this novel is garbage.

In Prior's Wood by GM Malliet

Rating: WARTY!

I quickly decided to give up on this whodunit audiobook because it was boring and there was no dunnit despite being over a fifth the way through it. The author seems to have spent a lot of time on her character biographies and then decided she didn't want to waste it, and so I'd been getting quite lengthy info-dumps about characters, none of which information seemed remotely relevant to the story. That assumes there was a story and by that point, I hadn't seen one! The title also struck me as odd. Should it be Priory Wood? Or did the place used to be a wood and no longer is? I guess in the end, I don't care!

This is part of a series and is an excellent argument for not reading series. The premise here is that a former MI5 agent (MI5 is Britain's equivalent of the FBI) is now a priest and helps the local cops solve murders. That concept initially intrigued me, but the story was so painfully slow that I rapidly lost interest and became bored. In addition, it's one of these quaint little English village murder mystery stories, but given this this is the seventh instalment in the absurdly-named Max Tudor series, this means that this quaint English village must be the murder capital of the entire country! It's not feasible. Another reason not to pursue a murder mystery series.

As if that wasn't bad enough the guy, Michael Page, who is reading this story had a really strident and grating voice. He reminded me of this British comedy show called Blackadder that I love, and when he's reading it, this guy sounds like Rowan Atkinson's main character from that show. When Rowan Atkinson does the voice, it's amusing, but I'm literally expecting a zinging one-liner every other sentence in the audiobook which of course never comes! As if that wasn't bad enough, there's a character named Owena. I'm not sure of the spelling, but every time he says the name I hear "a wiener" which makes me laugh, so this story wasn't working on so many levels!

It was initially quite entertaining, but rapidly drifted into rambling and boring exposition which contributed nothing to the story that could see. I have better things to do with my time than listen to this - even on a commute. For example, the sound of my car's tires on the road sounded highly appealing after Michael Page's droning nasal intonations.

Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff

Rating: WARTY!

This was a middle grade story that was way too young for me. I suspect it may be too young for many in middle grade. It was an audiobook indifferently read by Noah Galvin, and it was far too boring to hold my interest. I can barely remember the story because it made so little impression on me and I listened to so little of it.

The main character is a fifth-grade student named Albin, and goes by Albie. That should tell you the kind of juvenile approach the story takes. It would have been hilarious if the reader had done his voice as a chipmunk. But to be kinder, Albie is evidently learning impaired and no one is getting him the help he needs - except for the 'nanny'.

Alby's problem is that he's never been the best at anything, but rather than have him deal with that, this author seems to think he needs to be the best at something. Well he needs to have better parents, but the author seemed uninterested in addressing that. Albie's best friend is named Erlan, but at least he has a reason for that. Erlan is one of two sets of identical triplets in this one family which is being filmed for a reality TV show.

At this point I gave up on it because nothing is further from reality than a televised show and this felt like one more step into an unforgiving swamp. This is the second Lisa Graff novel that I have thoroughly disliked (the first being Lost in the Sun where she nauseatingly channeled John Green-around-the-gills), so I guess I'm done with her as an author of interest! I cannot commend this based on what I listened to, not even for a middle grade student.

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

Rating: WORTHY!

This author has an ear and an eye for middle-grade drama (as well as an amazing name!), and I loved the ambiguous title which related both to a musical play the school is putting on, and also to the lives of those involved in the play in one way or another. The production is "Moon Over Mississippi." I've never heard of it, and have no idea if it's a real play or not. I have no interest in sharing the obsession far too many people have with the civil war in this country. What the play was, was irrelevant to the story, but as it was, it was set in the civil war and was of course a story about love.

Callie is the girl and set designing is her game and she ends up with a triumph on her hands as one thing after another seemed to be set on derailing the production, but solutions were always at hand, even if some of them were thoroughly unexpected and entirely unpredictable. It would have been nice if the lesson Callie learned was that she did not need a man to validate her, but that was a relatively minor part of the story compared with the fact that - in everything except boys - she was a self-starter, and a smart, independent young woman who got things done.

In fact, the disconnect between her can-do success with the play and her cluelessness with boys was rather amusing, and the idea that the boy she wanted kind of fell into her lap at the end was like a cherry on top. I know others didn't like it, but I thought it was funny.

This was an early example of the author's work - her second book of four as of this writing. I've never read anything by her before and it's good to know that she goes on to hopefully ever better and greater things that I still have to look forward to! The artwork was gorgeous and the color supplied by Gurihiru (a Japanese team of which I assume Kawano was the colorist) was wonderful.

Crossing the Empty Quarter by Carol Swain

Rating: WARTY!

I had no idea what this was about even having read about two-thirds of it and skimmed the rest. It looked gorgeous from the cover, but the interior was nothing like the cover, and the stories, some thirty of them, were meaningless, disjoined and unappealing. Bereft of entertainment value, even the artwork felt like a betrayal since it was black and white and of lower quality than the cover.

I'm used to seeing this in graphic novels - a sort of bait and switch with a stunning cover paired with an indifferent interior, but often that's made up for by the quality of the story, In this case, no. There was no story. Instead there was a jumble of stories, all equally uninteresting. It should have been called Bleak House, but empty quarter isn't exactly inaccurate. Empty to the back teeth would have been better. I refuse to commend it in any way.

Boundless by Jillian Tamaki

Rating: WORTHY!

After the disappointing Indoor Voice which made me want to scream, it was nice to read a real story, well-illustrated, and such a quirky tale, too. This tells several stories, beginning with the story of Jenny, who has broken up with her boyfriend and discovers that there is a mirror world - updates on which she can read in 1Facebook - the mirror image of this world's Facebook.

Personally, I have no time for F-book at all. It's a dangerous, highly insecure, and risky environment in which far too many people put far too much trust, a trust which has been abused time and time again. This idea of a mirror F-book amused the heck out of me, consequently. In 1F-Book, there is 1Jenny as our Jenny refers to her, and who is leading a rather different life than is Jenny of our side of the mirror. Jenny becomes obsessed with her counterpart to an unhealthy degree, and is rather miffed by the fact that 1Jenny seems to have her act together and to be leading a satisfying romantic life.

As if this isn't enough, in another story, a weird music file that isn't really music but isn't not music either, surfaces and obsesses people after one guy who discovers it renames it Sex Coven (even though it has nothing to do with sex or covens) and re-releases it onto the web. Listening to it the whole way through is supposed to be transformative.

In another tale communication with animals becomes possible presumably courtesy of the animals, because which humans would think of that?!

As if this isn't enough, Helen starts becoming smaller and less substantive, and eventually shrinks down to almost nothing and blows away in the wind. I don't know if this is intended as a commentary upon the diminishment and marginalization of women or the interchangeability of women in some blinkered perspectives as Katie White of the Ting Tings sang so eloquently, or the second class status of too many women, but it was certainly a fascinating journey and I commend this work highly.

Indoor Voice by Jillian Tamaki

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb claims this book "collects pen, brush, ink, watercolor, and collage experiments that show how Tamaki arrives at her illustration work, as well as more polished and personal comics work examining her relationship to her parents and their influence on her art," but I got none of that from it. As I mentioned in another review, to me this book felt like it was the author's rough sketch book and she sent it for publication by mistake, confusing it with something else she'd actually intended to send. That's how bad it was - scrappy and with no real content or story to it.

I don't buy the claim in the blurb that it was intended to show how the artist creates because there was no attempt at instruction at all - it was merely a set of sketches - scrappy, unfinished, half-formed, amateurish and uninspiring. I've grown fond of the Tamaki cousins, but this was well below the standards Jillian has set in other works and I cannot commend this as a worthy read. This voice should have been kept indoors!

Skim by Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki

Rating: WORTHY!

These two cousins, Mariko the writer and Jillian the artist have been interesting me lately because I find their work mostly appealing. I say mostly, because I definitely did not like Jillian's Indoor Voice, which was a scrappy little book that had all the charm and import of an artist's rough sketchbook sold as is! It told no story and was uninteresting to me. It seemed to be a paean to New York City, but it was more like a pain, especially to someone who has neither love for nor interest in people mythologizing NYC.

Skim was a different fettle of Kitsch. The story was interesting if a little confused at times, and the artwork was engrossing if not exactly brilliant. The art evoked a feeling of a story about dolls rather than about people, because of the art style and I wondered if this had been intentional. Regardless, it told the tale of a young, confused high-school girl trying to make her way through life among a barrage of conflicting messages and poorly understood signals. She seemed to be going through one issue after another including an unrequited crush on her female art teacher, and I have to wonder whether any of this was autobiographical. I have no idea if it was, but it seemed heartfelt. Maybe it was pure invention. Maybe it was the story of someone the author knew at school.

The story begins with the suicide of the ex-boyfriend of one of the elite girls at the school, Katie Matthews, and everything is overly dramatized, suggesting - since it's all told from the perspective of Kimberly Keiko Cameron (the Skim of the title) that this is how she sees it, not necessarily how it actually is. Perhaps Skim, as suggested by her name, is very shallow and fails to see deeper meanings in things, while deluding herself that she is seeing deeper things that are actually not there at all. Skim is very jaded and cynical for one so young, and this comes out quite starkly in her exchanges with her best friend - a friend who she drifts apart from over the course of the story as her allegiance haphazardly shifts in an unexpected direction.

The truth or fiction of the tale isn't important, because these are certainly someone's truths, somewhere, and the story was entertaining, although I have to say the ending was a let-down - it just sort of fizzled-out without any conclusion or indication of any future direction for the main character. Not all issues are neatly resolved, of course, but I think we're entitled to feel they ought to be in a fictional work. This one felt like the author had grown tired of writing this and wanted to move onto something else. That aside though, I enjoyed it and I commend it as a worthy read.

Cuba My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez, Dean Hapiel, José Villarrubia

Rating: WORTHY!

Told in stark red and black, this is a story based on the writer's own life. In the story, 17-year-old Sonya has ambitions to be an artist in Habana, Cuba, but ends up joining the Castro revolution and becoming a doctor where she encounters the horrors of war during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and ends up being imprisoned as a CIA spy by her own fellow soldiers. She's tortured brutally, but eventually is released. Despite all of this and the now constant feeling of stress and insecurity, and despite what she sees happening to her country on a daily basis, she continues to believe in the revolution, but as six years slip by and nothing improves - in fact things only progressively become worse - she finally reconciles herself to leaving, and finds the opportunity to move to the USA.

This is what the real life artist and medical trainee did, and she says that the events depicted here were real, but some changes were made to the story. The story serves to show that any radical ideology on a national level like this necessarily becomes a brutal dictatorship and a series of pogroms no matter how idealistic it maybe have been in embryonic form, and no matter how well-intentioned its supporters were. The story is a depressing read, but essentially a true story and I commend it because there are lessons to be learned here.

Eugenia Lincoln and the Unexpected Package by Kate DiCamillo

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook I picked up after enjoying an advance review copy of Dicamillo's Louisiana's Way Home. I loved that novel, but this audiobook was a disaster for me. It was read by a woman with the amazing name of Lorna Raver, but I wasn't much impressed by her reading. It was the story itself that was the worst part, though. The story is very short, so it has that going for it, but it simply wasn't interesting or sensible to me. Maybe it wasn't intended to be sensible, but if that was the case, it wasn't goofy enough to be silly, either.

The story is that Eugenia Lincoln, a staid mature woman who lives with a younger, less-staid sister, is the recipient of this package, which I suspected her sister sent, but I gave up on the story before I ever found out who was the benefactor. The package contains a piano accordion and it incenses Eugenia - who never ordered it. She calls the supplier and demands they pick it up, but they claim they have a no return policy, so Eugenia decides to throw the thing away. As you might guess, that doesn't happen and she ends up liking it.

I honestly didn't see the point of this particular story. It wasn't funny, or entertaining, or educational. It was simply irritating to me, and the main problem was that there were so many interfering busy-bodies in Eugenia's life, all of whom she detested, yet not one of whom she had the wherewithal to dismiss from her premises, let alone her life. If these people had been amusing or downright weird, it might have been entertaining, but it's evidently one of those stories which the blurb typically advertises as 'quirky' and which has 'zany characters' and I normally avoid such stories like the proverbial plague. If you've ever been infected by Proverbialis pestis, you will know exactly what I mean. I can't commend this.

Women at Ground Zero by Susan Hagen, Mary Carouba

Rating: WORTHY!

Published the year after 9/11, but written when the events were still fresh and raw, this book was really hard to read, especially the 'In Remembrance' section at the back. The authors' intention was to contribute profits from the book to families of 9//1 victims.

The book covers twenty-eight female first responders (EMTs, police, fire) very nearly all of whom went into Manhattan on September 11th 2001; all of them survived. The three in the IM section did not: Yamel Merino, a 24-year-old old single mom and EMT, Captain Kathy Mazza, Commanding Officer of the Port Authority Police Academy, and police officer Moira Smith.

I wasn't impressed by the one story about a CNN news producer Rose Arce at all. I didn't think her story belonged in with these other women: every one of the other stories resonated; every one, no matter what the story was. The stories were of Carol Paukner, Maureen McArdle-Schulman, Mercedes Rivera, JoAnn Spreen, Regina Wilson, Doreen Ascatigno, Sue Keane, Janice Olszewski, Terri Tobin, Marianne Monahan, Bonnie Giebfried, Tracy Donahoo, Tracy Lewis, Amy Monroe, Kim Royster, Patty Lucci, Lois Mungay, Maureen Brown, Molly Schotzberger, Ella Mcnair, Kathleen Gonczi, Nancy Ramos-Williams, Brenda Berkman, Christine Mazzola, Carey Policastro, Kally Eastman, Jennifer Abramowitz, Richelle Jones, and Sarah Hallett

Most of these people were there shortly after the first plane hit or after the second plane hit. Some were later arrivals; others came in later still and had the unpleasant task of searching for body parts and personal effects. One of them was a captain who was on vacation, and had a hell of a time trying to get back to NYC to join her crew, most of whom had been sent in in the first waves and died there.

For me the two most fascinating stories were that of Bonnie Giebfried who was an EMT who told a story of constantly being moved further and further away from ground zero as the buildings collapsed, and one thing after another happened. She and her EMT partner would set up their triage and treatment operation wherever they could, with whatever equipment they could scrounge after having to abandon their stuff twice, and process people through. Their entire day went like that until Bonnie herself started having asthma attacks - which she hadn't had in years, but which were brought on because of the massive blast of appallingly contaminated air that swamped them not once, but twice as each tower fell. She ended up having to get treatment herself, and be evac'd across the river, but her simple matter-of-fact telling of her story engrossed me completely.

The other one that really left an impression was that of Terri Tobin. She was about to put on shoes that would work better for her in these conditions when the first tower came down. She was wanting to get into her car, but was luckily blown over a concrete barrier by the blast of air, and ended up covered in rubble. It was lucky because when she finally got a chance to look at her car, it was crushed and burning.

She worked her head clear of the rubble only to see her helmet cracked open and lying a few feet away. Those helmets are tough, so she felt her head and discovered a piece of concrete embedded in her skull. She had hold of somebody's arm and tried to pull him from the rubble, but the arm was all there was - no one was attached to it. She was starting to get organized again, her head now wrapped by EMTs who did not want to remove the concrete, when the second tower came down, She ran barefoot to the river, and was hit in the back by a piece of glass which stuck there. Still she was functioning, but was eventually ordered to go to the hospital by a senior officer. As if that wasn't already more than enough, she had been back at work only a week when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed a mere block or so from her home in Belle Harbor (or Rockaway as she describes it), a month after 9/11, and she had to respond to that.

There were so many other similar stories of these women being only a block or two away when the towers came down, and running in the choking black filth to try and escape, and having lucky escapes, being in the right place to seek shelter at a crucial time. Carol Paukner, the first story, was blown over twice by explosions. There are stories of people who should not even have been on duty that day but were picking up overtime or had switched shifts. Maureen McArdle-Schulman's was one of these.

Twenty-three year old Mercedes Rivera was one of the first on site and was ordered into the WTC by her commanding officer. Fortunately they'd moved their triage area to 7WTC before 2WTC came down, but they were swamped by smoke from its collapse. JoAnn Spreen was standing under the tower where the second plane hit. As they were moving away from the building, she was hit on the head by debris and evac'd out.

For some it was sheer luck where they were when bad things went down. Regina Wilson was working overtime and supposed to be on the truck, but one of her fellow firefighters told her to stay on the engine since she'd worked that the day before, so he took the truck and went in in the first wave - and never came out. Sue Keane was in 2WTC when one came down and had moved over to 5WTC when 2 came down.

Throughout these stories in which the authors made themselves commendably invisible, was an overriding concern for others in the team, the battalion, the precinct. More than one story made mention of a priest who was giving last rites to a firefighter who had been killed when hit by a falling body, and the priest himself was hit by debris and killed. There are cross-mentions in one story of someone whose story I'd read or would read before the book was done. There were endless mentions of white dust covering everything thickly, of the need for water to wash eyes out, of debris falling, of bodies falling, and of body parts that people encountered while moving around the disaster zone. The twin towers alone covered an area of about four football fields.

There were repeated stories of people being caught in the impenetrable black smoke and dust that seemed to go on forever before clearing, and that burned eyes, and choked throats, and seared lungs. For these people, 9/1l hasn't ended. There are bad memories, nightmares, and medical problems caused by inhaling that putrid cloud that came out each time a building collapsed. There are flashbacks and PTSD, and the undying memories of those who died - people who were family, friends, colleagues.

This is horrible reading, but it - or something like it - ought to be required reading. I commend this book unreservedly.

The Answer is Yes the Art and Making of The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Michael Singer

Rating: WARTY!

This was a large format hard cover print book purportedly about the making of Disney's 2010 film. I enjoyed the film, but I found the book to be boring. It was far less about the actual making of the movie than it was a tedious and fluffy puff-piece for the actors, idolizing the main cast which consisted of Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci, Omar Benson Miller, and Toby Kebbell.

I think the idea was to make a sequel to it, but it apparently didn't do well enough to go that far, which is sad because despite having some issues with it, I liked it overall. One of my main issues was that this movie is centered in a feud dating back to Merlin, with Cage's character Balthazar being the good guy and Molina's character Horvath being the bad guy. Let's forget for a movie that neither of those names has anything to do with Dark Ages Britain, and let's step right over the question as to why Horvath wants to destroy the entire planet. What's in it for him?! You kind of have to check your brain at the door for movies like this. Just enjoy the spectacle and hope it's not so bad that you wished you'd checked yourself at the door!

Because this is an American production, it cannot possibly take place in Britain - home of Merlin. Nope! It has to be brought to the USA, just like the treasures in National Treasure and its sequel - also Bruckheimer production starring Cage - had to end up in the USA. It's pretty pathetic that nowhere in the world is important enough to have its own history and events playing out. It's got be in the Homeland, doesn't it? How charmingly blinkered and provincial. Maybe when enough of these movies lose money, they producer will start to realize that hey, it's not the end of the world to stage a movie in another country - even one about the end of the world!

If you've never heard of a number of these actors listed above, it's because the writer outright lied about what sterling and up-and-coming stars-to-be they are. I'm not a huge fan of Cage - liking him in some pieces, not keen on him in others. The writer talked about what a huge range he has, but he's really Nic Cage in whatever movie he's in. I've never been a big fan of Jay Baruchel either, but he's ok. All he's really done since this is How to Train Your Dragon.

Alfred Molina is okay, but nothing fantastic. Who is Teresa Palmer again? Because this is the only move I've seen her in, and although she's made other movies since then, she's hardly become the breakout star the writer predicted. She plays a character named Becky Barnes! Is that like a female Bucky Barnes? Excluding her character entirely from the movie would have changed nothing significant in the story. It's no more appropriate to require a guy to be validated by a girl in a story than it is vice-versa. I really liked Monica Bellucci as Persephone in The Matrix trilogy, but other than that she's hardly shone in other outings. Alice Krige was in the movie briefly, and I like her, but her role here was so limited that it hardly did her any favors.

None of this prevented the author from singing lavish praises so I guess he had the right name for it. These actors listed in my opening paragraph are, according to the author, the foremost paragons of the acting world: the most generous; the most easy-going; the most hard-working; the most talented; etc., et-freaking-cetera. Barf. Is there any actor about whom these things are not routinely said in similar puff-pieces? Were I an actor I would be embarrassed by this crap and maybe these actors are, for all I know. Maybe none of them ever read this book.

The idolatry was about three-fifths of the book. Other than that, there were all-too-brief sections on various aspects of making the movie effects, but not really about making the movie, and that was it. If you like reading pieces which idolize and worship actors and tell you next-to-nothing about the process of making the movie, then this is certainly the book for you. It's not the book for me, and I dis-recommend it. In fact I'd go further than that and say I just dis it. You'll learn just as much from reading the wikipedia article about this movie.

Little Learning Labs: Astronomy for Kids by Michelle Nichols

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Not to be confused with Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame, Michelle Nichols is Master Educator at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, which I can say I have visited although it was many years ago. I thought this book was great. It's simple without being too simple, instructive, useful and very educational.

It places equal emphasis on fun projects and scientific learning, and some of this stuff was new to me, who thinks of himself a something of a science buff. Who knew you could measure the speed of light with a chocolate bar?! I kid you not, and you don't need to worry if you get it wrong because you can comfort yourself with the chocolate afterwards!

The book contains a galaxy of simple child-sized 'experiments' which any kid can do and which are certainly not dangerous. Divided into two units: observing, and scoping out the science, the book begins at the vey very beginning - not, not the Big Bang, silly, but at the beginning of the scientific method - making observations and recording your findings. It teaches children how to estimate angles in the sky with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and how to determine east-west and north-south line by means of two simple observations of shadows cast by the sun. It discusses sunrise, sunset, high noon, the Moon's phases, eclipses, and why stars twinkle. All of this begins with simple tests, experiments and observations any child can make, bolstered by the science behind the experiments explaining why we get the results we do and what they mean.

The science takes over with the construction of a pinhole projector made from a cardboard box and aluminum foil, how to detect infrared light, what ultra violet light is, making a solar oven, mysterious glowing water, and of course the very chocolatey speed of light. Does light travel slower in dark chocolate? Never mind, I just made-up that last bit!

I loved this book, I think it's a great introduction to astronomy for young children, with no dusty cobwebbed lessons! It's all fun, all simple, easy-to-understand and well explained, and most importantly, it's tied in to the science in easily grasped ways. You can't get a better science book for kids than this one, and I commend it fully.

The Slow Cooker Baby Food Cookbook by Maggie Meade

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Margaret Meade is a famous name in cultural anthropology, but this is not that Margaret Meade! Maggie Meade is a cook and a mom who runs https://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com and is the author of The Wholesome Baby Food Guide. This book - an alternative to 'who knows what's in there other than sugar and salt' processed baby foods - contains 125 recipes for creating your own 'I know exactly what my baby is eating' foods.

This section discusses the differences between organic and non-organic, but it makes no mention of cost! Organic is often an excuse to bump the price up and nutritionally speaking, organic food is no better than non-organic food. If you buy fresh non-organic food and wash it, there's no reason to fear fruits and vegetables, and the GMO 'worry' is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned, but obviously there is a variety of opinion on these topics and over use of any chemical is an issue. If you're vegetarian, the question of antibiotics in meat isn't a problem either, but it's definitely something you want to avoid as an omnivore!

Part one asks why make homemade baby food and why use a slow cooker? It covers the fundamentals of homemade baby food, slow cooker basics, choosing ingredients and serving them safely, and feeding your baby solid foods at every stage which also contains an important discussion about allergies. Allergies are being re-evaluated and better understood all the time, and things which parents were once urged to avoid with young children are now becoming more and more viewed as foods which ought to be introduced at a relatively young age to avoid children developing allergic reactions later in life, but obviously these are things you need to discuss with your pediatrician. This book also covers topics such as incorporating baby food making into your routine and tools and equipment needed to do so.

Part two covers slow cooking: single ingredient dishes, fruit and vegetable combinations, beyond applesauce recipes, grain-based cereals, and recipes for fingers, spoons, and plates. Towards the back there are sample meal plans, a list of resources, and a comprehensive index.

I have to say that this book appears to have been designed as a print book from the ground up. The pages are in two-page spreads and are legible on a decently-sized tablet computer, but I'd definitely not try using this via a smaller tablet and certainly not on your smart phone, which to me would be a bit of an inconvenience.

That aside the book is well-written, contains good and concise information, and lots of useful advice - plus, of course, a wealth of wholesome healthy recipes to bring children along from the early milk-diet to the regular world of soft and then solid foods as they mature and become accustomed to new foods. Babies are very adaptable, and introducing new tastes at a young age will circumvent many of the 'my kid hates vegetable X' problems as they progress to the otherwise troublesome twos!

Children need to be loved and cared for, but they are tough and do not need to be swathed in sterility and padding and 'protected' from 'evil foods', even at a young age. Careful introduction of a variety of foods at an early age is a great recipe for raising a healthy child at a healthy weight, who has no fear of new foods, and who eats their greens! I think this book goes a long way towards resolving some of those early food issues and I commend it as a useful and worthy read.

O is for Old School by James Tyler

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

A is for apple is old school. This new look at children's ABC's is da biz! I loved it. There's no reason you can't have fun educating your kids, so why not start with this new look, where A is for 'all good', D is for 'dawg', H is for 'hood' and so on?! The book is colorful, amusingly illustrated, and spot on with the alphabet! I commend it as an original, amusing, and a welcome and different take on your ABC's! Word, Bro!

Simone de Beauvoir by Isabel Sánchez Vegara, Christine Roussey

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher, and very close companion of Jean-Paul Sartre. She lived through most of the twentieth century, and left a strong legacy of feminism. She wrote novels, biographies and an autobiography, and she made a lasting impression on literature.

Illustrated simply but colorfully by Roussey, this book tells a concise and easy-to-read story of her impressive life from her well-to-do origins, through her family's loss of fortune, to a decent education, to a life spent as a single woman, giving birth to literature instead of children, by her own choice. She pretty much became a feminist before there were women recognized as such (back then they were called trouble-makers!), and a philosopher long before earning any academic credentials. It just goes to show that girl-power isn't a modern invention!

She lived a long and productive life and while I would not agree with the assertion that she "was the first person to write about women making their own choices" (has the author not heard of female authors such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Mary Wollstonecraft and even earlier, women such as Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu?!), she definitely made substantive contributions to what was known back then as emancipation.

I think books like this - part of a series of strong females of history - are highly important for young children - male and female - to read, and this is one more in a series I have been happy to support (with one exception!). I commend this one as a worthy read.

One Day So Many Ways by Laura Hall, Loris Lora

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Written descriptively by Hall and illustrated well by Lora, this book is definitely needed. As a reader who tires of so many novels by American authors set in the US, as though nothing ever happens elsewhere in the world, I welcome books which amplify how important the rest of the world is, and illustrate how critical it is to have an awareness and understanding of other nations, especially at a time when we have a president who seems determined to wear blinkers.

Children need to grasp how big this world is and how different and alike other children are. It never hurts to be wise to the ways of the world and this book represents a sterling start, taking us through a typical day across Earth, but looked at through many facets: those of children of over forty other nations.

It begins with the kids waking up to a new day, breakfasting, traveling to school, learning, playing, making friends, having quiet time, enjoying sports and games, traveling home and completing chores, homework and going to bed! It discusses how different each country can be, or how similar, by illustrating each new page with many vignettes of life elsewhere and at home.

Do the Venetians in Italy enjoy the same food as us? How about children in Burkina Faso? In Jining? In Kathmandu? Do they play the same games? Dream the same dreams? Hope for the same things? The stories come from literally across the entire globe, from two-score nations, from Australia to Alaska, Mali to Mexico, Ecuador to England, Ireland to India, Patagonia to Poland and more.

If I had one complaint it would be that the ebook comes as a double-page spread which makes it rather small, even on a tablet computer. It would have been easier to read had these double-spreads been split into individual pages, and I saw no reason why they could not have been. Evidently this was planned as a print book with little thought given to ebook versions which is rather sad. Other than that, I fully recommend this book as a worthy and educational read for all children everywhere!

She-Hulk. Vol. 1, Deconstructed by Mariko Tamaki, Nico Leon, Dalibor Talajić, Matt Milla, Andrew Crossley

Rating: WORTHY!

This is where my understandably one-sided love affair with Mariko Tamaki began! She wrote this and it was illustrated well by Nico Leon and Dalibor Talajić, and colored beautifully by Matt Milla and Andrew Crossley. This comic book was a worthy read. She-Hulk was problematical and a potential disaster when she was first conceived, apparently by Stan Lee during the TV run of The Hulk, so copyright would stay with Marvel and not with some TV production company in case they decided they wanted a female version!).

Lawyer Jennifer Walters (what is it with Marvel and super heroes who are lawyers?!) became a rather more subdued version of the original Hulk when she had a blood transfusion from her cousin, Bruce Banner (who was the original Hulk of course). By subdued, the effect in her is to become stronger and to turn green, but to retain her own personality and smarts, something which the Hulk isn't known for.

Despite it being named volume 1 (I wish they would not do that), this is not the original run of the comic; this version is well-along in the overall life of She-Hulk - post Civil War 2. With Bruce dead, his cousin trying to cope with that and find her place in the world. Her own original comic ran only for two years at the start of the eighties and after that she was reduced to guest appearances in other comics until more recently. It's nice to see her revived, and with a female writer who happens to be one I've grown fond of lately.

She-Hulk took a few pages out of Deadpool's book in one of her later incarnations, breaking the fourth wall, and mimicking cultural icons such as Demi Moore's bare-bodied, pregnant-and-in-the-magazine-cover pose. She-Hulk wasn't pregnant but held a beach-ball strategically! In this volume though, she's well-behaved and quite subdued. That doesn't mean it's all Jennifer all the time, by any means. The comic told an intelligent and believable story and I enjoyed it. I commend this one and will look for more of this series.

Invincible Iron Man by Brian Michael Bendis, Stefano Caselli, Kate Niemczyk, Taki Soma, Kiichi Mizushima, Marte Gracia, Israel Silva

Rating: WORTHY!

So I read the second volume of the Ironheart graphic novel - this is the one featuring a female (a young female - she's only fifteen, but already a brilliant student at MIT). I had some minor issues with this volume. It's supposed to be about this girl who is replacing Ironman, so I was disappointed to discover that the title made no mention whatsoever of Ironheart!

The first volume at least had the title as "Invincible Iron Man Ironheart" which was bad enough (it made no sense for one thing), but volume two excludes the Ironheart bit altogether, like the comic isn't even about her! WTF, Marvel? There really is no point in promoting a female super hero if all you're going to do with her is render her as an appendage of the previous male hero to hold that title. It defeats the purpose, you know? For goodness sake let her fly solo. And don't treat your readers like idiots who would have no clue that Ironheart is a female incarnation of Iron Man without you spelling it out on the cover - because clearly you have no faith in the cover illustrations accomplishing that aim! LOL!

That aside, the overall story wasn't too bad, although it lapsed a bit here and there. Tony Stark's AI presence is nothing but an annoyance to me. If it was amusing, that would be something, but it isn't, and having so many types of speech balloon (one for Riri suited-up, one for her out of suit, one for Tony, one for Friday?) means it's a mess. Clean it up!

At one point I actually wondered if I'd be able to give this a favorable rating, but then it picked up and it saved itself enough that I'm willing to pursue this at least as far as volume three. One of my problems with it, and this applies to more than this one comic, is Marvel's lack of imagination in creating new villains. DC is just as bad. Let's resurrect the Joker again why don't we? Never mind how many times we killed him off, let's really keep digging back into the ancient past and bring out the same villains over and over instead of going to the trouble of using our imagination and creativity. Barf. The Joker is a joke. The Riddler is ridiculous. Catwoman is a pussy and the Penguin is for the birds. Find a new shtick!

This volume did change it up a bit in that the two main villains were females, but they were female versions (in effect) of male villains. Instead of the endlessly returning Doctor Doom, we got a female clone: a psychotic despot who was queen of Latveria of all places. Seriously? Get a new shtick, Marvel. At least, as temporary queen of Latveria, after defeating this idiot non-entity of a villain, Ironheart shone. Later Ironheart went up against Lady Octopus (and to her credit made fun of her title - this was one of the things which amused me and brought the novel back into my favor.

I'm happy to say that despite the lack of any female writing input, the art wasn't appallingly genderist, perhaps due to the presence of Kate Niemczyk and Taki Soma on the team, but it's still not enough. I am still hoping for better, but for now this isn't too bad.

Invincible Iron Man Ironheart by Brian Michael Bendis, Stefano Caselli, Marte Gracia

Rating: WORTHY!

I tend not to read many super hero comics because they often rub me up the wrong way and the poses the artists put the characters into all-too-often seem utterly unnatural when they're not uninventive, and the sexualization, particularly of females is not acceptable to me. Plus the dialog is a bit lame - especially when the heroes are exchanging smart-ass remarks in the middle of a fight. It's thoroughly unrealistic - even given the premise that superheroes exist - so it's not my cup of gamma ray-infused kryptonite, but once in a while I do read one for better or for worse. This one was for better as it happens, although there is still much to be done here.

This one threatened to annoy me from the cover alone because despite it being about Iron Man's replacement (in this comic world Iron Man is dead - at least as much as any super hero or villain is ever dead in these things), the female who is taking over still doesn't get top billing, although her 'real' name curiously appears on the cover at the bottom of the page. Normally I pay little attention to covers because the author has little or nothing to do with them and the artist typically hasn't even read the novel, as judged by how irrelevant or clueless the cover art is, but in graphic novels it's different: the cover does matter.

J Scott Campbell's risible (if it were not so serious) 2016 cover that caused such a controversy when it was revealed is almost as inexcusable as his being in total brain-dead denial about what an inappropriate cover it was. Marvel seems to have learned a lesson from that, but there are more they still need to learn - like hiring an artist who is a black woman maybe to draw Ironheart instead of yet another white dude? Was Nilah Magruder not available? Yona Harvey? Anyone? Ferrous Jewels?! There have to be scores of young black female artists who would love a shot at this. Afua Richardson? Taneka Stotts? It's important - it just needs to become important to the comic book corporations: not important to say, but important to actually do!

And what's with the name Ironheart? It was the name of a Japanese soft-porn knock-off of Iron Man and the content was certainly not appropriate to link to a fifteen-year-old black woman who's set to become a hero. What was wrong with Iron Girl? Was it ever considered? Tony Stark is cleared to be an Iron Man, but Riri isn't cleared to be a girl? Well, I guess not according to J Scott Campbell she isn't!

The story shows Riri - who is purportedly a genius, creating her own suit and starting out as a self-made woman, finally being mentored by Tony Stark's AI, and befriending Pepper Potts who is also a super hero now. The story was upbeat, fun and enjoyable, but there's much more to this incarnation of the Iron Hero. I enjoyed this comic and felt that Riri had a voice worth hearing, but maybe others will disagree. Pre-orders for this comic series slowly fell after issue one. I can't help but wonder if this was because the female wasn't quite so sexualized after that outcry or maybe it was something else. Maybe the writing isn't there. Maybe the plotting isn't, but I intend to read more of this story and see where it goes. I commend this issue at least.

Kickback by Judith Arnold, Ariel Berk, Thea Frederick, Barbara Keiler

Rating: WARTY!

This was a major screw-up! I got this book under the cover of Still Kicking which is the first book in the Lainie Lovett mystery series (originally published as Dead Ball) which title is advertised in the back of this novel! LOL! There's a sample chapter of DropKick at the back also, which is the very novel I was reading, but the sample chapter was not the same as the chapter one in the book I was reading, Someone was very confused when they put all this together!

I am not a series person, so I was amused to discover that this book is in fact the third book in the series and it was sold under the wrong cover. The third book - the one I am actually reading, was called Kickback. The second book was Dropkick. I learned of these two other books from references in this third book. As if that isn't confusing enough, the author has the annoying, and to me inexplicable if not inexcusable habit of publishing under other names. Her real name is Barbara Keiler, but she publishes under three other names listed in the title

On a point of order, there's no such thing as a dropkick in soccer - or football as the rest of the world calls it - because Americans inexplicably call handball 'football' and handball itself is something else - and an offense in soccer! Maybe the American game should be call 'runball' or 'carryball'? Neither is there a term 'dead ball' in soccer for that matter. I think this gimmick of giving your amateur detective a gimmick and then using that as a seed for gimmicky book titles is insulting to the reader - like a reader couldn't remember which author she likes? Or what the book series is that she likes? Call me perverse, but I have more faith in readers than that, misplaced as it may be!

But on to the story. The story was as confused and confusing as selling the wrong novel under the title. And it's not well-written. If this is what a master's degree in creative writing from Brown University gets you, I'm happy to be degree-free. This is yet another in a too-long line of 'housewife' detective stories where a female with evidently too little to do with her time masterfully one-ups the inevitably inept police in solving a murder.

This kind of story tends to take place in a town too small to support the massive murder rate the series slowly reveals. Why would anyone live in a town like that? The amateur detective tends to be appallingly slow on the uptake and this means the story, which could have completed handily in 150 pages, ends up being, as this one was, 270-some pages long. It's way too long and the 'detective' looks stupid because of it. She repeatedly fails to share information with the police, which is actually a criminal offense, and she fails to act like a normal, rational human being in common-sense situations, and worse, consistently fails to add two and two. Instead she comes up with zero and takes her time doing it. As a teacher she should know she should show her work!

This school teacher, Lainie, learns that $150,000 has been stolen from the school's PTA account. It takes a while to get this information, and this is the first inkling I had that Lainie's dinghy has a few holes in it. Never once does anyone seem to ask if anyone is tracing the loss of funds. In fact, it's not even clear (through the fifty percent of this novel that I read before DNF-ing) that it's been reported to the police. They're certainly not investigating because if they were, they would have arrested Debbie the secretary because the trail clearly leads to her. Debbie's computer isn't even taken as evidence by the police - instead, it's still in use at the school, so anyone who might have impersonated Debbie and moved the funds has ample time to cover their tracks. There's actually no evidence of any police investigation whatsoever.

What happened (we learn in the story's own sweet time) was that the money was transferred from the PTA account to another account, then that one was closed with the money having been withdrawn. You'd think the bank would have records of where the money went and you'd think a bank teller would remember someone who closed an account and picked up a check for $150,000, but none of this is mentioned. The husband would seem to be the obvious suspect - and he's feeding his wife fruit smoothies every day - into which the deadly drug - Viagra, which is potentially deadly for someone with heart problems, could easily have been slipped, yet Lainie never suspects this guy at all despite the fact that he was an accountant and would know exactly how to move money around.

Lainie is tunnel-focused on the head of the PTA, which in this novel is consistently referred to as the PTO - which to me is Paid Time Off, so that works! LOL! But she's so focused on her - the 'obvious' suspect - that she cannot see anyone else. Meanwhile I'm suspecting the husband, I'm suspecting the friendly nice teacher Lainie knows because he's too nice and there's no reason to suspect him. I'm suspecting Lainie's favorite suspect's daughter, who we're told more than once is a genius on the computer. I'm suspecting this couple, the husband of which was discovered to be cheating on the wife when she discovered Viagra - Viagra! - in his briefcase, several pills of which were missing. Lainie never even considers that, nor does she sneakily visit the bathroom in Debbie's house to check the medicine cabinet to see if there actually is Viagra there among the medicines that Debbie might have actually taken by accident. In short, Lainie's a moron who has no business interfering in a police investigation.

At one point, Lainie learns that the nice teacher, with the absurd name of Garth, had a very brief fling with the bitchy PTO woman Cynthia Frick and Lainie got all over him on that topic, which seemed to me to be none of her business. Yes, Cynthia has a daughter at the school, but that's no reason for Lainie to get on this teacher's case about being involved with her. If he'd had an affair with a student I could see her taking off like that, but with a parent? It just seemed like too much, so I wondered if this was to set up this teacher as a bad guy for later revelations that he was the perp?

The biggest problem with Lainie (apart from her lack of gray matter) is that she's so passive, and I think the writer is a bit lazy in letting some things go without offering some sort of valid reason or explanation for her behavior or for the way things happen. What made me quit the novel was that Lainie was quite obvious tailed by someone in another car, yet never once does she snap a picture of the car's license plate and of course she doesn't report it to the police. That was the final straw for me. Lainie is too stupid for words. I cannot commend this at all.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell, Henry Cole

Rating: WORTHY!

Justin Richardson is a doctor, Peter Parnell a playwright, and Henry Cole an illustrator. How they all came together to create this true story is a mystery to me, but I'm glad they did. There's an ignorant but powerful element out there who believe that same sex relationships are an abomination, and also a choice made by people, although they can never explain why people would make a choice to become victims of the abuse and violence aimed at them by these same vile people who think they somehow have the right to dictate how everyone else should live. Wrong!

And nature itself proves them wrong - very wrong. It's not a human choice, it's a perfectly natural happenstance. Gender isn't binary. It's a sliding scale which can slide one way or another throughout life, and it's not a human thing but an animal thing - and I mean that in a generic sense, not a punitive one. We are all animals, and many animals have LGBTQ members. This book amply demonstrates that by telling the true story of two male penguins who decided they wanted to emulate any reproductive couple.

Roy and Silo (who have their own Wikipedia entry!) are chinstrap penguins who built a nest and tried to hatch a rock. This doesn't work. Rather than have them trying to steal another couple's egg, some inspired and inspiring members of the zoo staff gave them an egg from a cis couple who were not able to hatch two eggs. Roy and Silo successfully hatched the egg and raised 'their' daughter - Tango - successfully. Evidently taking her cue from her parents, Tango herself paired with a female penguin called Tanuzi, although this part of the story doesn't appear in this book.

This book was listed among the top-ten banned books for five years, which is why everyone ought to read it. I commend it. It plays a little bit fast and loose with the true story, but not by much and it's still worth reading even so.

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence

Rating: WORTHY!

I negatively reviewed a book called The Key to Lawrence many years ago and the idiot author came after me like his being a complete dick and calling me names would somehow change my review of his and his wife's crappy novel! For all I know he's the one who went around adding an anonymous negative two-line non-review to some of my books on line, but unlike him, I write for myself and I don't care what reviewers say. As it happens, I was right about that novel which has since evidently gone out of print. At that point I had never read TE Lawrence's memoir, but I had seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia (and watched it again recently). It was a good movie, but quite inaccurate in many particulars, but that's movies for you - always over-dramatizing. I'd always intended to read the book which underlay it.

So...I recently picked up the audiobook of The Seven Pillars from the library and it wasn't bad. It was hardly a ripping yarn, but was interesting to me because I like to read historical books which were actually written during the time being described. It's really useful if you intended on writing a book set in that period (which I'm not - not yet anyway!). The odd thing about this book is that the seven pillars go completely un-iterated and Wikipedia provides the reason for that.

I discovered that the title of the book apparently came from the Biblical book of Proverbs, and Lawrence was writing a book about seven great cities of the Middle East, but he abandoned that when war broke out, and he destroyed the manuscript afterwards. He wrote a memoir instead, but retained the title because he liked it so much. Wikipedia reports that he had to write the manuscript for it three times, once because he left the original on a train and it disappeared. What would that be worth now if anyone has it?

The book describes his experiences fighting against the Turks alongside the Arabs during World War One. It is heartfelt. Lawrence really respected and connected with those people. He spoke the language (he'd learned it long before the war began and traveled extensively in Syria, which the French were claiming as a colony - we know how well that worked out for them in Vietnam) and he learned to dress in Arab garb because it worked! In an amused anecdote (it was amusing to him) at the end of this book, he describes how he was mistaken for an Arab while working to improve conditions in a hospital, and he was abused as an Arab by a complete dick of a British officer who clearly had no idea who he was or what he'd done.

After the war, Lawrence, under an assumed name, applied to join the Royal Air Force, but was rejected when the officer interviewing him deemed he was actually applying under an assumed name! That officer was W. E. Johns, who later went on to write the successful 'Biggles' series of novels about an adventurous aviator. Lawrence was successful in joining the RAF, but his tenure was short. When the air force realized who he really was, they kicked him out and instead he joined the tank corps under another assumed name! Eventually he went back to the RAF under his real name. He really wanted to be a soldier, didn't he?!

It was hardly fitting for such a man, and neither was his death. Lawrence was killed at the age of 46, two months after leaving military service, when he swerved his Brough Superior SS100 motorbike to avoid two boys on bicycles. His head injuries resulted in his death six days later. The doctor who treated him was instrumental in promoting the use of helmets for motorbike riders. The accident is how the movie begins.

With a colleague, Lawrence had prepared fresh maps of the Negev desert in 1914 since it was considered to be of strategic importance in wartime. He joined in many Arab raids against the Ottomans, attacking cities and sabotaging railroads, and at one point the Turks offered a substantial reward for his capture (some two million dollars at today's prices). No Arab betrayed him. The Sharif of Mecca had given him the status (and thereby protection) of a son. It was Lawrence's idea to bring down Aqaba from the landward side rather than seaward, and he was successful. After that he could pretty much do no wrong in Arab or British eyes.

It's a pity we don't have that kind of cooperation and understanding with the peoples of the Middle East today, isn't it? I commend this book as a worthy read especially if you've seen the movie and want to get the real skinny.

I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel, Jazz Jennings

Rating: WORTHY!

This was on the commendable 'banned books' display at my local library - daring readers to take one of the banned or challenged books on loan! Great idea! Based on a true story (you may notice one of the authors is named Jazz!), this picture (and text!) book for younger children is very well-written and gorgeously illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas.

Thirteen-year-old Jazz (when this book was published) had always been a girl where it matters (in her brain!), but unfortunately was born a boy on the outside. This did not please her, but over time, this crucial difference was understood by her parents and overcome by them as a family so Jazz could be who she honestly felt she truly was. Not every child in these circumstances has that advantage which is why books like this are so important.

This book also had its problems, not in terms of writing or illustrating, but in terms of being listed by the American Library Association as number four among the top 10 most challenged books in 2016. That's how it came to my attention because of the 'banned books' exhibition. This was one of them. It's amazing, amusing, and very sad how people can find books like this so terrifying that they try to banish them so no one can read them. Those are the very people who need to read a book like this, and I'm glad this book exists and I commend it for everyone and anyone to read.